About WatchmanHQ

Security shouldn't depend on how big your budget is.

WatchmanHQ provides free, plain-language security guidance for families, nonprofits and small businesses, alongside a daily threat-intelligence feed for the people who protect their networks. The goal is simple: Make it easy to do the right thing.

Why I built it

A food bank needs to serve its community. A small accounting firm needs to protect its clients. A family business needs to keep the doors open.

None of them should need a dedicated security team just to understand what threatens them or what to do next.

Large companies have people who read threat reports, investigate suspicious activity and turn research into action. Smaller organizations often leave that work to one overwhelmed IT person, or to someone whose actual job has nothing to do with technology.

The threats don't disappear because the resources aren't there.

I built WatchmanHQ to help close that gap: take publicly available security research, check it carefully, and turn it into practical guidance and usable threat feeds.

There's a bigger reason, too. Our communities depend on small businesses, charities and local services. Helping them stay secure protects the people who rely on them.

Who's keeping watch

I'm Vincent Morris, a security practitioner with more than twelve years across IT operations, cybersecurity, cloud security and DevSecOps.

My work has taken me from small, family-run businesses to Fortune 10 companies. I've led incident response, built teams and helped senior leaders turn security concerns into workable plans. Along the way, I've seen what well-resourced organizations can do to protect themselves, and how much of that help never reaches everyone else.

WatchmanHQ is my way of putting some of that experience to work for more people.

The personal reason is simpler: I love helping people. The most satisfying part of my work is making someone else's day a little easier. Small kindnesses matter. If this project helps a nonprofit avoid a bad week, keeps a business running or gives a family a clearer place to start, that's work worth doing.

This is an independent project run by one practitioner, supported by automation and the public work of security researchers. When you see "we" on the site, that's the house voice. You can read about the machinery behind it in How it's built.

Why the lantern

A watchman keeps an eye on the dark and raises the alarm before danger reaches the people counting on them.

The lantern is a warning, but it's also a welcome: a light that says someone is paying attention, and you're not on your own.

That's the spirit behind WatchmanHQ. Watch. Warn. Protect.

What you can expect

• Free access. The blog, feeds and downloads are free. There's no paid tier reserving the useful stuff.
• Careful checks. Indicators go through validation before publication, with safeguards intended to reduce false positives and disruption. See Methodology.
• Built to fail safe. A bad update never replaces a good one, and the site itself runs with no scripts, forms or cookies. See How it's built.
• Traceable research. Published indicators link back to their source reports. The researchers deserve credit, and you deserve context. See Sources.
• Transparency about AI. AI and automation help with the work. Their role and limits are explained in How we use AI.
• Visible corrections. Mistakes can happen. Corrections belong in the open, on the track record. If something looks wrong, report a false positive.

What it isn't

• It isn't a security service, a contract or a guarantee. It's best-effort help, given freely. See Terms and disclaimer.
• It isn't a sales funnel. If paid consulting ever comes along, it will be clearly separate from everything free here.

Get in touch

Email hello@watchmanhq.com. If you run a small organization and want to know where to start, write anyway. I read everything, even if I can't always reply quickly.